How many Sig Figs are necessary?

[Cooper Baddley 1F]

If I am doing a problem and the answer needs to have 5 Sig Figs and the answer comes out to 0.001295 would you round and put a zero after the 9 (that becomes a 0 when you round up), leave it unrounded, or round without the zero?

[Selena Yu 1H]

You would put a 0 after 5 so it would be 0.0012950 because the two zeros in front of the one doesn't count as sig figs. Hope this helps!

[Karina Kong 2H]

The reason why the two 0's right after the decimal are not significant are because they serve as place holders. If you were to write this in scientific notation, those 0's would be gone. Therefore, you need to add 0 at the end to have 5 sig figs.

[Rosa Munoz 2E]

leading zeros do not count. There are a lot of good videos on youtube and khan academy.

[Areena H 2K]

The Zeros before the 1 do not count. Therefore to get 5 sig figs, you must add a 0 after the five to make it significant so no rounding is necessary here.